Armida

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About the opera Armida

Armida, Hob. 28/12, is an opera in three acts by Joseph Haydn, set to a libretto based upon Torquato Tasso's poem Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered). The first performance was 26 February 1784 and it went on to receive 54 performances from 1784 to 1788 at the Esterháza Court Theatre. During the composer's lifetime it was also performed in Pressburg, Budapest, Turin and Vienna. Haydn himself regarded Armida as his finest opera. Armida then disappeared from the general operatic repertoire, and in the 20th century was revived in 1968 in a concert rendition in Cologne, and later a production in Bern. The United States premiere of the opera was givem at the Palace Theatre in Manchester, New Hampshire with the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra for the Monadnock Music Festival in September 1981. The production starred soprano Sarah Reese in the title role and was staged during the Vietnam War by director Peter Sellars.
Karl Geiringer has commented on how Haydn adopted the "principles and methods" of Christoph Willibald Gluck in this opera, and how the opera's overture alone encapsulates the opera's plot in purely instrumental terms. Haydn's opera contains occasional echoes of Sarti's Giulio Sabino, played at Esterháza in 1783.